Doctor warns smoking could cause your nipples to fall off

If there was ever an effective anti-smoking campaign, this one is probably it. Plastic surgeon Anthony Youn, of CNN’s The Chart, is warning women who’ve had breast surgery and are smokers to kick the nicotine habit. Because of the damage smoking does to your lungs? Nope. Because it could make your nipples fall off. Seriously.

The nicotine in cigarettes and the carbon monoxide contained in cigarette smoke can diminish blood flow to various parts of the body. These toxins act as a virtual tourniquet. If the blood flow to a particular body part becomes greatly reduced or halted, that body part dies.

In my memoir “In Stitches,” I told the story of a smoker whose nipples turned purple while undergoing a breast lift surgery. Purple is the precursor to black. Black is the precursor to falling off. To save the patient—and her nipples – we turned to the only treatment available.

And what was that treatment, you might ask? Leeches. Yep, you read that right. They went all medieval. This news just gets better and better.